1. Telling Tales Literature unit 2
Korea
Telling Tales
Literature unit 2

2. Context
Written in 1970, likely that some of the experiences described could be loosely autobiographical as McGahern’s father fought in the Irish war. Set in early 1950s.
Irish War of Independence ( ). The execution described at the beginning of the story occurs at the beginning of the war. The execution of prisoners was random and this is the only reason that the father in the story is saved. Father’s bitter attitude towards the war is expressed later in the story when he calls Ireland a “fool of a country” and explains his belief that he would be “better off” if he had fought his own battles rather than for his country. The story also describes the aftermath of poverty in Ireland for rural families dependent on agricultural and fishing for their incomes.
Korean War ( )
Generation gap between man and boy – difference in attitudes towards the son’s future. Son’s guilty realisation that he “was discarding his life to assume my own”.
Modern readers might be horrified by the casual, mercenary attitude the father has towards sending his son to fight in the Korean war, yet McGahern is likely trying to convey the desperateness of his father’s situation and impending poverty.

3. Key Themes
Death: execution scene, metaphorical death of childhood and Irish rural way of life
Growing up and the future, formative experience
Hardship and poverty
Father/son relationship
Futility of war
Conflict
Importance of the past
Age: contrast of youth and experience
Identify/highlight/annotate quotes for all the above as you read in your groups

4. The father
In the character of the father, McGahern has created a man who has a sense of failure. He is about to lose his fishing licence so that foreign tourists can fish the river in his place and he will not be able to survive on potato crop alone. He fought for an independent Ireland; he might have died for it, but the random nature of the reprisal executions saved him. His son is leaving him to pursue his own life.
Quick quiz:
Why do you think he decides to tell his son about the executions?
Why does he say ‘There’s no room for ambition is this poky place?’
What does he think of his country?
What does he think about his son?
What does he think about himself?

5. Impact of War
"I looked down and saw the furze pods bursting, and the way they burst in all directions seemed shocking like the buttons when he started to tear at his tunic. [...] it destroyed the day“ (AO2)
The memory of the execution is embedded in his mind and resurfaces to destroy a natural image of happiness on his honeymoon.
"he'd draw fingers across his eyes as if to tear a spider web away“ Father’s emotional trauma/wants to forget but unable to take away the horrifying and lasting consequence of war.

6. Growing Up
The guilt of leaving came: I was discarding his life to assume my own"
"It's the land of opportunity, isn't it, a big, expanding country? There's no room for ambition in this poky place."
"...was the shock I was to feel later when I made some social blunder, the splintering of self-esteem and the need to crawl into a lavatory to think."
"It'll be your own funeral."
"Each move he made I watched as closely as if I too had to prepare myself to murder."

7. 5 key sections
Focus on plan provided. We will talk through the selected quotations – add AO1/2/3 detail as we discuss.
Always essential to shape any essay:
Exposition
Pivotal moment
Resolution
Writer’s intention (concluding sentnce)
Narrative viewpoint (intro sentence)

8. Action
Read Korea and Chemistry again (x2) Read your revision notes for both stories and highlight helpful vocabulary that you could use in your essay. Using you ‘5 point’ essay structure scaffold, fill in boxes the complete a detail plan for the ‘Family Relationships’ question. Write essay to time in lesson on Monday. The is opportunity to focus on securing confidence in essay structure/style/addressing AO2/3 before a independently planned essay and a ‘cold write’ essay before mock.